 |  |
 |
The first Handbook of Cognitive Neuroscience appeared in 1984. According to that volume’s preface, this was only 8 years after George Miller and Michael Gazzaniga coined the term “cognitive neuroscience” to describe a new research front on the border between biological and behavioral science. At the time, Miller, Gazzaniga, and a few like-minded colleagues, saw the need for a new research program that would use the techniques of both brain science and cognitive science to explore the biological foundations of human cognition. That first handbook, edited by Gazzaniga, contained only one chapter on development. For the most part, that chapter described the methods of cognitive science, what they had revealed about the human mind, and what, in combination with brain science, they might reveal about the development of the mind–brain.
Now, Charles Nelson and Monica Luciana have organized and edited the first Handbook of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. Its publication testifies to the rapid progress developmental cognitive neuroscience has made over the past 16 years. The handbook more than fulfills the vision that Miller, Gazzaniga, and other early cognitive neuroscientists had for their new research program. As one can see from the handbook’s sections on sensory and sensorimotor systems, language, executive function, and cognition, the theories and methods of cognitive science have a central role in developmental cognitive neuroscience. Furthermore, cognitive neuroscience has progressed to a point where scientists can begin asking and answering fundamental questions about interactions between emotion and cognition. In these areas, methods of cognitive science allow researchers to conduct careful analyses and to develop detailed models of the mental processes that guide and regulate our behavior. Using these models, scientists can ask how the components of those models might map onto the neural structures and circuits that provide the biological substrate for cognition.
Brain imaging and recording technologies are among the central methodological paradigms of cognitive neuroscience. Imaging and recording technologies allow cognitive neuroscientists to study neural structure/mental function correlations in normal human brains. Initially recording and imaging techniques, such as PET, that required administration of radio isotopes allowed scientists to study structure–function relations only in adult brains. Developmentalists could use adult studies to frame hypotheses about what might be happening within a child’s developing brain. Recent technological advances, such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and multi-electrode brain recording, have yielded methods that can be safely used to study structure–function relations and their development in children’s brains. These new techniques plus more refined cognitive models account for the progress and heightened interest in developmental cognitive neuroscience.
This handbook also illustrates how the brain sciences contribute to cognitive neuroscience. Neuropsychology has a long history of the study of how brain trauma affects behavior. The power of studying normal versus impaired brains, both mature and developing, is evident in the handbook’s section on neurodevelopmental aspects of clinical disorders.
Basic developmental neurobiology has elucidated developmental phenomena such as corticogenesis, neurogenesis, and synaptogenesis, as well as the role of critical and sensitive periods in development. There have also been attempts to discern how such phenomena relate to human behavior. Combining basic neurobiology with systems neuroscience, imaging, and cognitive science will no doubt expedite our understanding of how changes at the cellular and subcellular levels affect and are affected by experience. Some of the most recent, and exciting, findings in basic neurobiology establish that the human brain remains malleable and plastic throughout our lifetimes. One of the great opportunities in developmental cognitive neuroscience, as this handbook indicates, is to explore what this new understanding of lifelong, neural plasticity implies for brain and child development.
Recently, claims about what brain science might mean for parenting and early childhood have captured the public’s imagination. We should encourage the public’s interest in developmental brain science and applaud attempts to base early childhood policy and practice on a scientific basis. However, in some instances public enthusiasm far outstrips our scientific understanding. Too often the messages broadcast by advocates and the media do not accurately reflect what scientists currently know about synapses, critical periods, neural plasticity, and how experience affects the brain. If we wish to base policy and practice on brain science or cognitive neuroscience, it is imperative that scientists knowledgeable in the relevant disciplines engage in careful discussion of what their disciplines, alone and collectively, can contribute to better policy and practice and articulate their conclusions to the interested public. This handbook provides an excellent starting point for that discussion.
The power, promise, and importance of the attempt to understand the biological foundations of human cognition, are amply illustrated throughout the handbook’s chapters.
John T. Bruer
